Selected Poems and Letters (Rimbaud, Arthur)

Parallel Text Edition with Plain Prose Translations of EachPoem

Format

Paperback

Price

$17.00

Paperback

ISBN 9780140448023

576 Pages

22 Feb 2005

Penguin Classics

18 and up

Overview

Arthur Rimbaud was one of the wildest, most uncompromising poets of his age, although his brief literary career was over by the time he was twenty-one when he embarked on a new life as a trader in Africa. This edition brings together his extraordinary poetry and more than a hundred of his letters, most of them written after he had abandoned literature. A master of French verse forms, the young Rimbaud set out to transform his art, and language itself, by a systematic “disordering of all the senses,” often with the aid of alcohol and drugs. The result is a highly innovative, modern body of work, obscene and lyrical by turns—a rigorous journey to extremes.

Jeremy Harding and John Sturrock’s new translation includes Rimbaud’s greatest verse, as well as his record of youthful torment, A Season in Hell (1873), and letters that unveil the man who turned his back on poetry.

Includes a generous selection of Rimbaud’s major poetry followed by more than 100 of his letters